Hello there.
I would like to backup my KDE settings as i intend to do a new installation and i dont have a seperate home partition.
What i would like to avoid though is backing up data. I would only like to retain the preferences of the applications.
Is keeping the ~/.kde/share/config/ enough to achieve that?
Thanks in advance.

Depending on the distribution, it could be ~/.kde or ~/.kde4. You may also wish to check ~/.config as well - although KDE applications themselves do not use it, they may be depending on file associations, etc which could be stored there.

With regards to not backing up data - I would be careful there as it is possible that some KDE applications may not handle the lack of the data they are used to being able to access well.

Like i said my distribution has ~/.kde.
My ~/.kde directory has the following entries:
Autostart: empty, used for user defined custom autostart entries
cache-$HOST: many directories containing eg. favicons, the set wallpaper, http data, mostly temporary entries you dont need to keep. symlinked from /var/tmp/kdecache-$USER
env: similar to Autostart
shutdown: similar to Autostart but for shutdown actions
socket-$HOST: its surprising $TEMP isnt used here instead those are stored in KDE's configuration directory symlinked from /tmp/ksocket-$USER
tmp-$HOST: empty. symlinked from /tmp/kde-$USER

The only interesting directory is ~/.kde/share which contains the following:
apps: data stored by applications. I also notice that some applications may not only store data there. eg. my custom colour profile and setting in konsole.
autostart: KDE's default autostart actions. .desktop files.
config: applications configuration files. although as noted above some like konsole store configuration under apps/ as well
kde4: only contains a services directory which has en empty searchproviders directory. i assume this is used for custom kde services added.

It seems that the way KDE applications store their configuration files is not entirely consistent eg. what konsole does with my $TERM setting which is stored under ~/.kde/share/apps.
Is there a plan for KDE to follow the XDG directory specification at some point? That would hopefully simplify things.
I see theres http://techbase.kde.org/KDE_System_Admi ... _Hierarchy and http://techbase.kde.org/KDE_System_Admi ... _Hierarchy which define all these things.

Even though it says "KDE supports the (XDG) base directory specification" i dont think any of the KDE applications is following it.

Any such change to use ~/.share and ~/.config would likely be part of KDE 5 if it occurs, to avoid major incompatibilities.

Some weeks ago I was thinking about an interface to backup/restore/delete configs on KDE SC. Something like Android does, but not only for each app but also with the whole bunch of KDE apps. Well, just a crazy idea...

I would recommend posting such suggestions in the KDE Brainstorm, however I will warn that it seems a lot easier to implement than it actually will be due to a number of factors.

bcooksley wrote:I would recommend posting such suggestions in the KDE Brainstorm….

I think it was posted three years ago: KDE System Settings - Backup & Restore. I have had both bad and good luck with restoring settings from the ~/.kde folder; e.g., the color scheme returned instantly. It might be worth a try to make a copy of this directory and experiment with restoring previous customizations and default settings as needed. Also, a handful of apps will export their settings and import settings from a previous system.